US: Cattle Market Review Week 5, February 3, 2025

“We’ve had a nice rally in the last few weeks, and we’re seeing some longs taking money before the end of the month,” said Austin Schroeder, an analyst at Brugler Marketing. Analysts say demand from meatpackers has slowed as they’ve bought all the cattle they need for the week.

Weaker beef cuts also weighed on cattle futures . Choice block beef fell $3.06 to $327.48 per hundredweight (cwt) Thursday afternoon, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture . Select beef fell $4.77 to $315.90 cwt.

Limited cattle shipments to the US and temporary US ban on shipments from Mexico after discovery of beef in MexicoNew World flies continue to keep prices low.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico's agriculture chief is willing to discuss resuming cattle exports to the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it had no update on when imports could resume. It is scheduled to release a report on U.S. cattle inventory levels after the close of trading on Friday.

The U.S. cattle herd report showed the cattle and calf inventory fell 0.57% to 86.662 million HEAD. The 2024 calf crop fell 0.1% to 33.53 million head. Beef cow inventories fell 0.53% to 27.86 million head.  

WEEKLY COST OF CUT OUT CAT.CHOICE

CATTLE SALES

Sale of cattle, heads

Average weight

Week 4

Week 5

Growth per week,%

Week 4

Week 5

Growth per week,%

Bulls (live weight)

6 427

10 735

67.0%

1 491

1 491

0.0%

Heifers (live weight)

2 987

5 719

91.5%

1 331

1 338

0.5%

Bulls (slaughter weight)

754

7 786

932.6%

961

984

2.4%

Heifers (slaughter weight)

804

851

WEEKLY WEIGHTED AVERAGE BULL PRICE

BEEF PRODUCTION                                                                     

Indicator

Week 5

Previous week

A year ago

Growth per week,%

Growth per year, %

Volume of cattle slaughter

600,000

599,000

632,000

0.2%

-5.1%

Live weight

1,447

1,446

1 386

0.1%

4.4%

Slaughter weight

879

879

831

0.0%

5.8%

Beef Production (million pounds)

526.4

525.3

524.6

0.2%

0.3%

CME: Live Cattle Futures

Week 4

Week 5

Growth per week,%

February

204.78

204.60

-0.1%

April

203.03

202.30

-0.4%

June

197.38

196.70

-0.3%

CME: Feeder Cattle Futures

March

276.58

275.73

-0.3%

April

275.45

275.13

-0.1%

May

270.30

273.13

1.0%

You can learn more about the state of the cattle market in the usa (cattle prices, cost of beef by category, production dynamics) in the weekly reviews of the MEAT market in RUSSIA and in the world from Meatinfo.ru. Weekly reviews are available as part of a subscription.